Keeping up with the Turachiondos

Although I've been sending so-called "manifestos" on a semi-regular basis, I was inspired yesterday by my brother's fledgling blog, and I decided that I might as well start my own. Hopefully it will turn out to be an easier way to keep everyone informed, and although I'm a little wary of the power of the internet to distribute to the world every passing thought I may not have the good judgment to keep to myself, I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

More than anything, I find it hard to believe that I've been here for five months already. It's actually seven months that I've been gone, if you count my time at Fort Bragg, although I generally do my best not to think of that place. We're still in the thick of the summer construction season, so work has been quite busy, and since the fiscal year ends in a month we're also under the gun to produce paperwork for a bunch of new projects so that some of them might get funded if there's extra money at the end of September.

Despite being busy right now, it's likely that within about two weeks the pace of work is going to change substantially. Ramadan starts in mid-September, and it sounds like people generally work from around eight AM to one or two PM during Ramadan. On construction sites I don't imagine that even those limited work hours are going to be as productive as usual, since I can't imagine being too motivated to overtax myself if I couldn't eat or even drink water during the day. Point being, I think we're in for a change of pace in September and October, which is probably a good thing. Around the time Ramadan ends is when I suspect it will start getting cold, wet, and maybe snowy around here, so there are some definite changes on the horizon.

I think what I'm going to do with this - and I'm wide open for suggestions if anyone has any - is to try to gather my old e-mails and post them, in case anyone is getting nostalgic for some Iraq '06 cynicism. I'll probably use this as something of a journal, to keep track of what's going on here and keep everyone informed if anything interesting happens, or to answer any burning questions people might have. I still have several long e-mails about specific topics I'm working on, but as everyone knows by now, those are kind of slow in coming. They're not all manifestos - I'm trying to distance myself from the raving insanity implied by that term - perhaps screed would be more appropriate. Sometimes they're tirades, I can admit it. And occasionally even cynical rants. But manifesto? C'mon, that seems harsh. Whatever they are, people seem to enjoy them, so hopefully I'll have more coming soon.